Beijing (Bay-jing)

Coming off the train from Dalian was probably the most overwhelming moment of the trip. Overwhelming can mean many different emotions: joy, sadness, or anger. For me at that moment it meant just overcome. Not with emotion but with the senses-smells, noise and heat.



I have to say that after 25 years of marriage, I have come to appreciate this man very much. He organized a beautiful trip for us in Beijing, where we would end our China journey, and found us a safe clean and luxurious place for us to stay.

and we're walking 

up an escalator

 inclined walkway

twenty minutes later we finally make it outside. We had hired a driver (Thanks Joe the Driver from Harbin!) 

got all our luggage into the back of the van. 

Turned right out of the train station and saw them doing construction on a storefront. #safetyfirst

There are 4 train stations in Beijing. We took the Beijing downtown line. Our driver took us to our hotel, the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel Beijing, which was close to the business district and banking district. The hotel was within a few blocks of the subway.

Beautiful hotel. :)

http://doubletree3.hilton.com/en/hotels/china/doubletree-by-hilton-hotel-beijing-BJSDTDI/index.html

Beloved had reserved a suite for us, with a small kitchen separating the two bedrooms. There was a master suite (above) with full tub and shower in the bathroom. 

Tank was still struggling with a cough/cold and we were grateful that he was willing to sleep on the couch in the living area. I worried that he would keep the girls up with his coughing. 

Girls' room. No tub, but their own shower and bathroom. 

We made it to our hotel and settled in with just enough time to spare to hit the Happy Hour. They had a full, self-serve bar and counters covered in trays of appetizers, cheeses and pastries. So here come the Americans with three kids and we took over the joint. ;) Thankfully few people were left.

After we ate our fill (embarassingly so) we decided we'd take a small tour of our surroundings. There was a lovely garden that had a footpath around the setting, lit by warm lights and with piped-in music. (Not sure what it is with the Chinese and piped-in music they seemingly can't have a beautiful outdoor setting without accompaniment).

On our way back up to our suite we passed by conference rooms. All of them were being used. At one there was a circular table with a man standing in the center of it and an overhead of some equation. By this point it was about 9pm. Businesses were still in conference, having meetings, making ideas. I asked Beloved "When you travel for business, when do you usually quit work?" He answered "Well we usually got out to dinner together. We would never be working together that late."

Not to say American ingenuity is hard at work. He spends many hours in his room preparing lectures and slideshows for his presentations due the next morning.

Off to bed. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day.

Binhai Road

After our tour of 'Venice', Yong collected us back into our van and we trundled off to Binhai Road. The southern coast of Dalian was considered at great risk for naval attack, so the road was built for combat readiness in the 1970s. In the 1980s Deng Xiaopeng chose to maintain the road, except open it now for tourist and travel. Not warmongering :).

We had driven the road earlier in our stay, taking only a few minutes to take pictures and stop for the view. The weather was cold overcast and rainy, and we were all dressed in shorts. Yong promised to take us back later. I'm glad he did.



Binhai Road is extremely congested, with the Tiger Beach Ocean Park and many, many hotels and restaurants along the way. Crowds were becoming de rigeur for our travel, but even this was getting to be a bit too much. We drove out of the city and west along the road.


Downtown Dalian

Traveling west on the Binhai Road

 ceramic cows

love this one of Doe and a large insect (cichlid?) 

Step away. 

Asked Yong to stop so we could walk along the roadway and across a bridge along the coastline.

oh smart sea shell sellers by the seashore! I was entranced. Purchased a large painted clam shell and a large helmet shell. Some of the spines broke off during the travel home :(

Windmills. In the distance you can see the beginning of the supsension bridge, which is to be built across this relatively beautiful bay to cut off 20 minutes of traffic snarl. 

Another view of the Dalian Starwood hotel. 

We ended our day with one last visit to the Dalian Bathing beach. It's a man-made beach and it was relatively uncrowded, due to the afternoon downpour. The beach was fairly small, with a pebble beach, not sand. To the east of the beach was a collection of beachside restaurants, with covered patios and walkways streaming past all of the restaurant choices.

 

By the way I was wearing my swimsuit cover-up all day. I had intended on going into the water, but once I saw how dingy it was I passed. 

After we walked a few hundred feet I witnessed my first food orgy. I wish I could capture the absolute gluttony I saw. I was too scared to take a picture because all of the participants were boisterous, loud and screaming drunk. At a large round table sat about twenty young Chinese men and women, and by 5pm the table was covered in empty beer bottles. There a few men passed out or simply resting their head on their elbows on the table.The men were all wearing white polo shirts, and scattered all around on the floor were stacks 4-5 tall of greasy stained paper plates of rib bones and rinds of watermelon. They were laughing and guffawing, and the protagonist was a heavy-set man with a large belly straining his shirt and highlighting the fresh oily stains of his meal. Something about the noise of screaming and laughing and boisterous Chinese, the sight of so much food being consumed and the absolute filth the participants were wallowing in made me feel ill. Even though the smells of barbecuing beef ribs on the grills were tantalizing, the sight of post-consumption was grotesque. I had initially thought a candlelit dinner on the shoreline eating exotic food with my Beloved sounded pretty much close to perfect, but I changed my mind. 

The social customs of food in China are a little odd for me, just a silly North American gwai lo. It is considered poor manners to not slurp your food as eating, and the noisier and sloppier it is the better. The offering of beer or alcohol by your host is always expected to be consumed. When they started offering Doe (all of 18) round after round of Harbin beers at our bon voyage dinner, I started to really feel awkward. She would oblige, per custom, and the men we were sitting with would stare at her with unwelcome want, and mutter and smile quietly back and forth to each other. I finally had to step in and say 'no more' after about her third round....

Anyway, we left the restaurant area neat the bathing beach, and headed back to the hotel 

Cool tide pools with very pointy rocks.  

All in all not a bad little vacation spot. Dalian was one city I would not mind coming back to.